#vodkalibur

[sc-intothedarknightofthesoul]

Tried my hand at recreating the anniversary art of Grøh in-game (plus the necklace that was part of a personal headcanon I got going), with the help of Vodkalibur.

[soul-engraver]

I wanted to share another two outfits I made for Talim when it was her birthday, but life happened (again), so I'm posting it now.

The first one is loosely inspired by her SC3 1p (tried recreating it, but couldn't do it even with mods), mainly the color palette and the butterfly theme. Well, technically my version has butterflies and bird wings, but I like to pretend that those are butterfly wings.

The second costume is inspired by this picture (except with more clothes, holy heck project soul). And by 'inspired' I mean 'I liked the hat, and it just so happens that there was a mod of this specific hat already'. I'm not sure if blonde hair was intentional on the art, but it made for a nice alternative to her usual dark hair.

[soul-engraver]

"For better or worse, this sword is my fate"

For SC community prompt 'Corrupted to the Core'.

I may be blurring the definition of 'character not corrupted by Soul Edge' a bit here, since Ivy is cursed by it from birth. However, this fact is the reason I picked Ivy for the prompt - what if she embraced her fate in a different way, becoming the wielder of Soul Edge?

The reasoning for this is tricky, since her desire to destroy the cursed sword is Ivy's primary motivation throughout the series. I think it can be a combination of keeping Soul Edge from falling into the wrong hands (read: any other living being), and the belief that since Ivy is born to be its vessel, she's the only one fit to wield it. Would it go according to plan or not is a different question.

More screenshots and details about putting this look together are under the cut.

I am lucky that there is already a mod that alters Ivy's look in soul charge to match Cervantes' corruption. There is an option to add his patterns to her as well, but I decided against that for two reasons - to separate her from Cervantes and to match other wielders of Soul Edge, Pyrrha and Siegfried (coz these two don't have glowing marks, just the eyes).

Took a costume from concept art of SCII as a foundation to build upon, bc its hood and cape make it unlike anything else Ivy has worn (while still being a decent fit for her imo). The cape has a rose pattern (at very least I pretend that those are roses), though it's too dark and bleak to properly see. That is intentional, as it's supposed to show that the part tying Ivy to her adoptive English family is the one that matters the least at this point.

However, I wanted to keep the armored left arm and boots since they were a part of her every 1p costume. The pauldron and the boots weren't an issue, but no matter what I tried, the armor on the left arm either didn't show up or caused her hand to disappear (most likely bc it clashed with Pyrrha's malfested arm), so I left it as is. This could be an unintetionally good thing because if I'm correct in thinking that the claws of her armor help Ivy control her snakesword through alchemy, it shows how Soul Edge feels so natural for her to control without additional tools.

(side note - I find it strange that despite appearing in official art in SC and SCVI, the cape was never used in any of her costumes. not even alternate looks. shame)

With the lack of other serpentine elements in the design so far, I added a snakeskin pattern (similar to that of her 1p costumes from SCIV and onward) to the boots and arm covering, and made them reddish brown to match the malfested right arm.

A choker and a small circle on the belt are there to match the few bits of armor. Initially I wanted to make the whole belt gold, but when I did that, the attached fabric also had this color (which btw, I lowkey hate that there is no version of this belt without the fabric, as it would've been perfect). So instead of coloring the whole thing gold, I made a small circle with thorns resembling the ones of her pauldron.

Any white color that was in her other costumes is gone to reflect the corruption.

As for the sword, there isn't a Soul Edge version of her weapon (that I know of at least), so I had to do with the weapons she has in the game. One looked close enough, all I did was change colors and add a pattern (that, now that I'm noticing, matches her gloves and boots).

Overall I enjoy the end result, even if I think the design could've been better. Imo her glowing eyes, mutated arm, hood and cape are the best parts of this design.

[soul-engraver]

Therapist: headless Algol-Geralt can't hurt you, he isn't real.

Headless Algol-Geralt:

[soul-engraver]

Therapist: Darth Talim and Darth Graul aren't real, they can't hurt you!

Darth Taim and Darth Graul:

[soul-engraver]

Damn, that new Star Wars fighting game is looking great! (and silly)

(can you tell that I'm having a lot of fun with these mods)

[sc-intothedarknightofthesoul]

...guess who got Vodkalibur last night?

[sc-intothedarknightofthesoul]

Created some characters for the next few upcoming chapters.

I've made a lot of side characters for the ItDNotS AU, maybe I'll make them into actual characters in the game at some point.